How to create a private class method?

Question

How come this approach of creating a private class method works:

class Person

  def self.get_name
    persons_name
  end

  class << self

    private         


        

Answer 1

private doesn't seem to work if you are defining a method on an explicit object (in your case self). You can use private_class_method to define class methods as private (or like you described).

class Person
  def self.get_name
    persons_name
  end

  def self.persons_name
    "Sam"
  end

  private_class_method :persons_name
end

puts "Hey, " + Person.get_name
puts "Hey, " + Person.persons_name

Alternatively (in ruby 2.1+), since a method definition returns a symbol of the method name, you can also use this as follows:

class Person
  def self.get_name
    persons_name
  end

  private_class_method def self.persons_name
    "Sam"
  end
end

puts "Hey, " + Person.get_name
puts "Hey, " + Person.persons_name

Answer 2

I too, find Ruby (or at least my knowledge of it) short of the mark in this area. For instance the following does what I want but is clumsy,

class Frob
    attr_reader :val1, :val2

    Tolerance = 2 * Float::EPSILON

    def initialize(val1, val2)
        @val2 = val1
        @val2 = val2
        ...
    end

    # Stuff that's likely to change and I don't want part
    # of a public API.  Furthermore, the method is operating
    # solely upon 'reference' and 'under_test' and will be flagged as having
    # low cohesion by quality metrics unless made a class method.
    def self.compare(reference, under_test)
        # special floating point comparison
        (reference - under_test).abs <= Tolerance
    end
    private_class_method :compare

    def ==(arg)
        self.class.send(:compare, val1, arg.val1) &&
        self.class.send(:compare, val2, arg.val2) &&
        ...
    end
end

My problems with the code above is that the Ruby syntax requirements and my code quality metrics conspire to made for cumbersome code. To have the code both work as I want and to quiet the metrics, I must make compare() a class method. Since I don't want it to be part of the class' public API, I need it to be private, yet 'private' by itself does not work. Instead I am force to use 'private_class_method' or some such work-around. This, in turn, forces the use of 'self.class.send(:compare...' for each variable I test in '==()'. Now that's a bit unwieldy.